Small and rural communities across the country are implementing transit projects that are making an impact on their economy and quality of life for their citizens. Communities are implementing projects that catalyze private and public investment, developing partnerships to improve transit service, and enhancing connections between people and jobs and essential services. Using transit investments, rural America is creating stronger and healthier communities. Our webinar will give an overview of our recent report "Putting Transit to Work in Main Street America" and offer two case studies of transit investments in Vermont and Maine.

The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD) has released the "Creating Successful Transit Oriented Districts in Los Angeles: A Citywide Toolkit for Achieving Regional Goals" report, which assesses opportunities to improve land use and transportation linkages in communities surrounding 70 existing and planned transit stations in the City of Los Angeles. The report identifies strategies to help communities around transit stations achieve high transit ridership, increase mixed-income and mixed-use housing opportunities and create sustainable neighborhoods while offering its residents a wealth of travel options.

President Obama has proposed $1.82 billion for 27 New Starts/Small Starts transit projects in his FY 2011 budget, including 10 new projects, nine that had previously been recommended for funding and eight projects already under construction. Winners of new Full Funding Grant Agreements include two bus rapid transit projects in Oakland and Connecticut, San Francisco’s Central Subway, rail projects in Honolulu and the Twin Cities and two lines in Denver.

D.C. Surface Transit commissioned the Brookings Institution to look at funding alternatives for a proposed streetcar. Brookings then subcontracted with Reconnecting America for assistance. Out of that collaboration came “Value Capture and Tax-Increment Financing Options for Streetcar Construction.”

Critics question whether light rail can generate ridership in low-density, automobile-oriented, polycentric US cities with smaller downtowns. Proponents counter that convenient access to stations via walking, park-and-ride, or bus allow for the development of feasible corridors connecting major residential areas with suburban concentrations of employment and the CBD. With this in mind, the used multiple regression to determine factors that contribute to higher light-rail ridership.
Cross-sectional data on average weekday boardings were collected for the year 2000 for 268 stations in nine US cities representing a variety of urban settings. The resulting model may be useful as a first-cut, one-step approach for predicting demand for possible light-rail alignments.
Purchase full copy: Factors influencing light-rail station boardings in the United States (2003)

An examination of the relationship between transit ridership and urban decentralization, an evaluation of metropolitan travel forecasting models and a look at transit-oriented development experiences as lessons for Connecticut and New York have been added to the Best Practices.

The effects of transit-oriented development on housing, parking and travel; the potential for the graying of America to increase transit ridership; and an article that empirically tests for positive network effects in transit use have been added to the Best Practices.

A trio of papers that look into transit ridership and the factors influence the decisions on how to get from here to there have been added to the Best Practices section.
Office Development, Rail Transit, and Commuting Choices
While housing is generally the focus of transit-oriented development discussions, job centers are equally important, according to a paper by Robert Cervero, professor and chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley.
"In the end, concentrating housing near rail stops will do little to lure commuters to trains and buses unless the other end of the trip—the workplace—is similarly convenient to and conducive to using transit.," Cervero concludes.
In California, central business district office workers with rail stations nearby are nearly three times more likely to commute by transit than workers in decentralized employment centers. Factors…